The magic of David Harbour as an actor is his ability to blend toughness and vulnerability, cheekiness and authenticity, physical prowess and an everyman aesthetic.
It's that unusual interplay of assets that made him a star as Police Chief Jim Hopper on Netflix's "Stranger Things" and an intriguing new character in "Black Widow." He plays Alexei Shostakov, a Russian "Captain America" equivalent nicknamed Red Guardian. For most of the film, he is in full middle-aged paunch form, a father figure to "Black Widow" Avenger Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) and spy Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh).
Here are excerpts from a Zoom conversation:
Q: That is quite a beard you wear in the movie. Is it real?
A: Most of the movie. There is one reshoot we did where it's me yelling out of a helicopter. That was a full fake beard. But the rest of the movie is my real beard. No enhancement. That disgusting, ratty beard.
Q: What did you like about playing the Red Guardian?
A: There was hardly anything I didn't like. It's hard to find anything I had trouble with except for doing stunts, because I'm terrible at them and I get hurt. I hurt myself a lot. But when they show you the finished product, you're like, 'Wow! That's fantastic!' In terms of Alexei, he's just so human. There are so many contradictions. Right from the beginning of the movie, he does this thing that's incredibly brutal in a certain way and takes the rest of the movie for you to go like, 'This guy?' You warm to him. He does have this humor, which comes out of the fact he is so oblivious to his own narcissism. He's such an idiot. There are people in your life who are like, 'Come on! Get it! You're not paying attention!' He doesn't get it.
Q: A therapist would go crazy trying to figure him out.
A: He's the perfect specimen. He's got a lot to work out, like guilt, shame and remorse. He'd be great in therapy!
Q: You've done a lot of stunt work in the past. Was this the toughest of them all? What injuries did you have from this movie?
A: By far, this was the toughest I've ever done. In the beginning, I was just so big, like 270, 280 pounds. So my knees were really shot. He has this super strength where he can jump. They have me on wires. That stuff was hard. But it wasn't as hard as a sequence in the beginning. I tore a hamstring. Thankfully, it was the last night of the whole sequence. I was just running and I felt this pop.
Q: "Stranger Things" involves stunt work, too, right?
A: We've done some crazy stuff this season. I can't wait for you guys to see it.
Q: Hopper gets captured by the Russians. You probably never imagined you'd play two characters so tied to Russia. And you told Jimmy Kimmel that you deliberately wanted two different looks. So Hopper is bald. The Red Guardian has a massive beard.
A: It was a horrible coincidence. I had to lose a lot of weight for Hopper. I really did want to differentiate them. They are both big genre things with the overlapping audiences, so I wanted to look very different.
